Crinoline Robot's vintage week

This was going to be a post about my lovely new vintage dress, which is a black-and-white 1950s cotton shirt dress from CalendarGirlVintage on Etsy. I heartily recommend her for service and speed, as well as quality of goods. However, my selfie skills (meagre as they were) appear to have evaporated, and every photo I took was under-exposed, over-exposed, all boobs, all belly, had scarlet legs (I balanced my camera on the snake's tank, which has a red heat lamp) or were blurry. BAH. So until I can persuade Mr Robot to take photos for me, you'll have to make do with this photo Jen (CDV's owner) took. Obviously it's rather wider on me than the dummy, but I think it looks great.



As for my aim to increase the amount of vintage and repro that I wear: I'm actually succeeding there. Okay, so some days it does boil down to plopping on a brooch as well as carrying my usual 1960s handbag, but even one extra accessory is an increase, and it's making me find fun ways to mix my vintage with my non-vintage. The bow blouse I got in the Heyday sale is a real winner. I'm getting loads of wear out of it and will definitely be ordering more in other colours, possibly with a view to snipping off the bow and adding a few embellishments of my own to vary the look a little. Heyday may not be the cheapest repro brand, but you can't fault the quality. I've also been eyeing up some Vivien of Holloway blouses for later in the year, though a lot of their prints are simply too exuberant for me.

I've really been enjoying reading In Retrospect, a vintage lifestyle magazine. My overall new year's resolution was 'Make things better', and that includes continuing to put money into worthwhile crowdsourced projects. In Retrospect was a digital magazine, and when they wanted to do a print version they had a kickstarter which I chipped into. You can read the online articles, buy print copies and subscribe via In Retrospect's website. It's a nice complement to other vintage mags on the market as they're more fashion-and-fun, easy to dip into if you're just getting into vintage, and this is a thoughtful publication, one that will appeal to the long-termer who wants something more in-depth, less 'vintage-trendy'. There's definitely room for both types of publication!

And my little brother gave me a belated Christmas gift and it is ACE. A collection of Busby Berkley musicals on DVD. Oh yes! It includes Gold Diggers of 1933, which I absolutely adore. Now I just have to persuade Mr Robot to take regular afternoon naps at weekends so I can watch them, because he loathes musicals.

How's your week going?